Caffie Greene, a longtime community activist who played a key role in the effort to bring a major hospital to South Los Angeles after the 1965 Watts riots, died Tuesday at St. Francis Medical Center in Lynwood. She was 91 and had a number of ailments, including pneumonia and heart failure, said her daughter, Penny Greene. Greene belonged to a formidable group of mothers from Watts who became a grass-roots force for community improvement after the riots, which left 34 people dead and more than 1,000 injured.

The California Department of Corporations on Tuesday ordered the Watts Health Foundation to stop soliciting members for the foundation's HMO, which provides medical care for about 74,000 people, most of them elderly and poor residents of Los Angeles County. The action against the United Health Plan health maintenance organization came one week after the 20-year-old parent foundation filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal Bankruptcy Code.

A lot of government programs for poor communities begun in the lifetime of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. are being cut back now. But organizations born in that time go on and, indeed, are finding new ways to grow here in Southern California. Watts Health Foundation has bought a majority stake in Family Savings Bank with the aim of tapping and supporting economic opportunities in South-Central Los Angeles and other neighborhoods.

A federal bankruptcy judge approved a financial reorganization plan Monday that will allow a South-Central Los Angeles health foundation to pay $12 million in debts while continuing to operate. The Watts Health Foundation, which had offered a growing number of free and low-cost preventive health care programs through its Watts Health Center since opening in 1978, filed for protection from its creditors under Chapter 11 of the federal Bankruptcy Code in March, 1987.

A student dashed into the nurse's office at Los Angeles High School the other morning and asked for an aspirin to relieve his headache. Sorry, the aide said, but the nurse's office cannot dispense medicine. But why not try the school health clinic on the other side of the counter, which offers a complete menu of medical services? So the student moved to the other side of the waiting room and asked the clinic receptionist for an aspirin. Are you a member of the clinic? Have your parents filled out the consent form?

Watts Health Foundation Inc., a nonprofit health plan that covers about 90,000 elderly and low-income Southern California residents, has filed for bankruptcy protection owing an estimated $50 million or more to creditors, including doctors and hospitals. It is the third time in three decades that the organization, which provides medical and dental care through its UHP Healthcare HMO, has been in financial turmoil.

December 12, 1993 | MONICA GYULAI, Clyde Oden, 49, is president and chief executive officer of the Watts Health Foundation. The foundation serves those who have little or no money, people with HIV, children and the homeless. Trained as a doctor of optometry, he also has master's degrees in business administration, public health and divinity. He is an assistant pastor of Emmanuel AME Church. Oden worked with Hillary Clinton's task force on health care reform and just returned from Japan, where he examined the Japanese health care system. He was interviewed by Monica Gyulai. and

For the last 26 years, the Watts Health Foundation has cared for people who are considered too difficult to serve, according to conventional wisdom. Because of language, age or economic status, many people are overlooked by most health care plans. Our history has shown that we are strong because we have served where conventional wisdom said you really couldn't survive.

The fifth annual "Third World Arts Festival" will kick off with a parade featuring director John Singleton ("Poetic Justice") as grand marshal today at 10 a.m. in South-Central Los Angeles. The parade, which also features TV news figures Larry Carroll and Marc Brown, among others, will originate at 103rd Street and Central Avenue and culminate at the festival site of 103rd and Compton Avenue. The festival of live music, art exhibitions and multicultural dance will continue until 6 p.m.